Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Bar Refaeli’s Sportsman of the month!

Bar’s been pretty busy over the past few weeks, but she made time for her favorite sports blog last weekend during the NFL Draft.  Bar nailed every single pick as I sat dumbfounded at her utter perfection.  After the first round ended Ms. Refaeli decided she had a new favorite athlete*, a ball player for the New York Metropolitans; Shawn Green.

Shawn won Bar’s favor by having a spectacular start to the season.  Green is batting .360 with 3 home runs and 13 rbis and helping the Mets offense stay on top of NL despite horrible starts from Carlos Delgado and David Wright.  I offered Bar a ticket to the Mets game to see Shawn in person, but unfortunately she decided it was better that we not see each other too often, as she’s afraid of getting attached.  So cheers to you Shawn Green, one of the hottest women on the planet is now your #1 fan, thats a Mitzvah!

*Writers note – As you may or may not know, Bar is one of the chosen people**, and so are all of her Sportsmen of the Month.

**Writers note – JEWS, YA MORON.

(bar)

NBA Awards… Hurricanes Style

With the season coming to a close and the NBA Playoffs fast approaching we at Hurricanes Are For Drinking are taking this opportunity to dish out our rendition of accolades for the 2006-2007 regular season. In this installment of the awards prediction we will take a look at two of the best and worst trades of the season.

Worst Trades

The Bulls Trade Tyson Chandler to NOOCH for PJ Brown and JR Smith. Then the Bulls trade JR Smith to the Denver Nuggets for Howard Eisley’s contract and two future second round picks. As of April 4th, 2007 Tyson Chandler is averaging 9.6 ppg 12.5 reb 1.79 blocks and is shooting 63% from the field. JR Smith has been the perfect addition to the 3-Point parched Nuggets and is now averaging 13.8 ppg and shooting close to 40% from behind the arc. PJ Brown still has the ability to make it rain by raking in a little over $8.5 million this season.

The Boston Celtics trade the 7th overall pick, Raef LaFrentz, and Dan Dickau to the Portland Trailblazers for Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff and Portland’s 2008 second round pick. The Blazers used that pick to draft Randy Foye and quickly traded Foye to the T-Wolves in exchange for Brandon Roy. Bassy Telfair has been a complete bust as a shoot-first point guard who cant shoot, while Roy has accomplished what was expected of him averaging around 16 ppg in his rookie campaign and leading the chatter for R.O.Y. (Rookie of the Year). IRONY!!!!

Best Trades

The Indiana Pacers trade Stephen Jackson, Al Harrington, Sarunas Jasikevicius, and Josh Powell to the Golden State Warriors for Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy, Ike Diogu and Keith McLeod. Jackson and Harrington have been the perfect addition to the Warriors new style (or old style that is) of Nelly-Ball. Al and Stevie have lead the Warriors back into playoff contention while the Pacers have faltered heavily and are trying to muster up a last minute run for a low seed in the dismal Eastern Conference.

The Houston Rockets trade Stromile Swift and the Eighth overall pick (Rudy Gay) to the Memphis Grizzlies for Shane Battier. Now on paper it would seem like the Rockets gave up a lot of talent for a statistically mediocre player, but Battier is the epitome of player who transcends stats with his brick-wall defense and his ice water circulation system that allows him to hit clutch threes from the corner. Swift was a big signing and bust for the Rockets who thrives in the open court rather than the Van Gundy half court controlling offense. Rudy Gay has really turned up his level of play in the second half of the season and has a promising future in the NBA. The Rockets needed an move that attended to some of their needs and Battier makes the Rockets legitimate contenders for the championship.

(Boston Celtics) , (Houston Rockets) , (Rockets II)

Gertrude Tubwoman’s 11 Pagan Steps to Making the Mortgage

Anyone who’s short on their monthly mortgage payment needs to listen up. This guide will not offer any temporary solutions like ‘cut up your credit cards!’ or ‘network marketing made easy!’. This guide is published by my aunt, a mystic Haitian shah-woman (auntie Gertrude Tubwoman) who often has visions of NBA basketball outcomes on days with slow news cycles. If you follow her advice, I swear this will get you out of debt! It takes money to make money, baby!! Hallelujah, Praise be to Jesus!

I guarantee that these picks will make you rich! It takes money to make money! Screw 401Ks, I invest every dollar I’ve made in Gertrude’s picks and it has made me rich beyond my wildest dreams. This is no joke!

Here’s how Gertrude Tubwoman is making her mortgage this month (picks underlined):
CHA @ WAS – 7

TOR @ ORL – 4.5

ATL @ NJ -9.5

PHI @ NYK -2.5

CHI @ DET -4.5

BOS @ MLW-6.5

SEA @ NOK-7.5

GS @ HOU-7.5

SAC @ DEN-8.5

UTA @ POR+7.5

LAL @ LAC – 3

You must pick all of these games to make a profit. She’s only not cleared 50% of the teams twice this season! Instant riches! I’m betting my house I feel so good about these picks.

Sharapova Supernova

Sexy tennis superstar Maria Sharapova is always the center of attention when it comes to T.V Coverage.  She successfully filled the gap Anna Kournikova left following her departure from hot athlete/celebrity to just plain old hot celebrity.  Therefore we are obligated to inform you of anything sexy Maria does, especially when it involves dancing on top of tables, or speakers, or my lap. 

Maria was in Miami tanning her perfectly toned body last weekend and spent her nights hitting the cities hot spots.  On Friday night, Ms. Sharapova hopped up on top of a speaker and showed off her fantastic legs, and she danced or something.  Dreams do come true…

(Maria)

Reconsidering Joakim: Sublime Slayer of American Pragmatism?

Last night, David Stern bowed to the hegemony of the final thrust of March Madness (probably because NBA games couldn’t get advertising during its commercials if it went head on with this prolonged American ritual), leaving the Florida – Ohio St. game as the only show in town (which is euphemism for ‘on television’… so po-mo). We feeble viewers witnessed a three-headed hydra slay King Kong and co. And at the center of it all was the most problematic and troubling figure in pop culture this side of Sanjaya: Joakim Noah brazenly danced and screamed and blabbered a post game interview incomprehensible to all states, both red and blue. Strange days we be in. It seems we as a people are united in the revulsion young Joah Joah Binks Noah. Why is that? And what does it mean?

Looking beyond his literal ponytail to all that it embodies, I believe it’s his Frenchness that upsets so many. There are but 3 points on the French ballplaying map: Tony Parker, Boris Diaw and now Joakim, who has a French (and Cameroonian) father and Swedish MILFish mother (phrase swiped from the brilliant Shanoff).

Let’s channel a little BShoals and locate each of these ballplayers in France’s other export to the West, French academic theory. Tony Parker, with his pending union to America’s own Eva Longoria, seems easily adopted into our cultural approval by becoming a celebrity beyond basketball, much like Jacques Derrida. Parker destabilizes opposing teams with his inversion of the margins and the center (Derrida’s famous theory) by scoring in the paint from a point guard position that normally facilitates from the margins of the court.

Boris Diaw, on the other hand, represents the theoretical underpinnings of Jacques Lacan. Diaw (whose meager box score makes him a horrendous fantasy play) plays like the human unconscious, a force structured like a language and at odds with the conscious work of STAT (who happens to accumulate mad stats).

So, TP3:Derrida::Diaw:Lacan::Joakim:_______. Fill in the blank. (If any state schoolers are somehow still reading, well done!)

Pejoratives aside, and returning to the point… America hates Joakim because he catalyzes a feeling of Lyotard’s sublime,an experience of pleasurable anxiety we experience when encountering something wild and threatening. America’s image of Joakim is dancing after victory (what hubris!). He’s been insinuated as gay or female throughout the blogosphere. But I contend, however, he’s actually threatening and wild, something that cannot be easily comprehended by the rational American mind. And the dude, with considerable help from his teammates, just slayed the great Greg Oden, the apex of American pragmatism and biological idealism. Oden, while crushing his individual matchups with Noah/Horford/Richard/Speights, lost the war and the pen with which history is recorded. So often do we hear Oden compared to the great centers of the past (Robinson, Hakeem, Wilt, Tree Rollins…sike!, etc.) that we implicitly understand copying is one mode of knowing (a tenant of American pragmatism, or so my roommate once tried to explain). This Darwinian force of nature, while still a force, no longer authors the Grand Narrative we as a viewing public demand; the micro-narrative revolution of diversity sings sweetly along with a mulatto Frenchmen momentarily at the helm. Strange days indeed.

Perverse Incentives: When a loss ain’t a loss seems a loss

Eat your heart out, Gertrude Stein.  NB: Harriet Tubwoman no belief in pictures.  Soul-stealing tool o’ the devel.

As everyone with a grasp of intermediate economic theory knows, moral hazard is a term defined as any situation where an organization does not bear the full adverse consequences of its actions. A recent illuminating example is from last year’s Clippers-Grizzlies tank fest, for both teams tried to lose to avoid the Spurs in the opening round.

I admit it, I play Chad Ford’s Draft Simulator incessantly. Such, such are the joys of lonely lottery bound fans. With each game, I find myself in the foreign position of actively cheering against my beloved Bucks; I hit you because I love you, sweetheart. Having already mapped out the rest of the season, I know if Milwaukee can find a way to lose the rest of their games, and the surging Celtics win just 3 more, than we’ll supplant them in the bottom of the standing and increase our chances of drafting a franchise Savior (either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant). Because NBA titles only go to the team with the best player (2004 Pistons represent the lone outlier of the last 2 decades), each loss helps us maximize our chances to this end.

This kind of thinking got me to thinking: how the hell is this possible? Turning to my undergraduate education in economic theory, it’s all a matter of incentives. Actually, screw formal economics, I believe ancient religious theory is the more appropriate lens through which to view this situation (that grammar was siiiiiiick!). While other teams in a similar boat have tried to maintain their competitive integrity by playing hard and kept their Oden/Durant lust a secret, the Bucks have out and out declared their tanking intentions, not unlike… I dunno. Fill in with timeless analogy of your own.  Honor seems a tax on the ignorant with this much at stake to the rational (jewish?) mind. I have a Jewish wife, do not fret. Yesterday, Mike Redd sat out with “left knee discomfort”, Mo Williams was pulled halfway through the fourth quarter to ward off any potential for a comeback, and Andrew Bogut has been sidelined for the remainder of the season because he’s sad (which, I believe was stolen from JD Drew’s chronic injuries). The training staff’s rhetoric has taken on Medieval tone: Dan Gadzuric is sitting out because of scurvy-infested spirits that inhabit his oversoul, praise be until Him. The idea seems, let’s trot out all free agents to be and let them squabble for shots. Mad squabbles indeed.

The Bucks front office, headed by the snake-oiled Larry Harris, son of Del and father of an aborted fetus that Ruben Patterson once consumed for energy, have essentially declared their disbelief in the karmic forces governing ping pong ball calamity physics. The basketball gods won’t reward this type of blatant stifling of all things good and holy, things like competing and passion and other qualities that college basketball always presents best. Besides, no way David Stern allows a midwestern small market to have a golden ticket. Shit’s rigged anyways. At least we saved face… oh wait.

I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter

Following last nights victory in their matchup with the Charlotte Bobcats, the Toronto purple dinosaurs secured a playoff spot for the first time in five years.  Normally, the revival of a flagging franchise would be the top storyline in this situation, however when Fabio puts in 22 points against Chris Bosh, it is pretty hard to ignore. 

In an interview following the loss, Fabio said he was looking for an edge, and he realized his trademark endorsement might do the trick.  While the rest of the Bobcats were running layup lines and stretching during pre-game, he stayed behind in the trainers room and greased up his entire body from head to toe.  “Every time someone bumps me, or tries to hand check me, they slide right off.  Its great, and it smells good too.  I didn’t expect it, but alot of the opposing players seemed to be getting really hungry as the game went on.” 

A number of the Raptors said they plan on filing a formal complaint with the league, likening Fabio’s actions to a pitcher greasing the ball, or using steroids.  This seemed to be the sentiment throughout the league, the substance is a performance enhancer, plain and simple, no matter how delicious it makes biscuits and bread.

(Herrmann)

Lazy Sunday Links Dump (4/1/07)

We’ve worked up quite a blockage of links over the past week. It’s time to clear ‘em all out. Since we visit all of the best sites (got a day to kill? work your way down the blogroll), we thought we would pass on some of our favorite links of the week to you. Because links make the blogdome rotate with the pretty colors, the whirring, and the whatnot. And because we could timestamp this post on Friday, and call it a weekend. We swear, we are very busy today, if you call vegetating on the couch, watching tv all day, ordering in, and generally being a waste of space busy. Besides, lazy sunday dumps are the best. Pictured is the radiant Jessica Simpson, because Sunday is her lord’s day.

The Turf Show Times is the shit, and if you’re not reading it on a daily basis, you should be. That’s all we’ve got to say about that.

The always hilarious Weekly Mog, written by our good buddy 1/2 Man, 1/2 Am-Asian.

It was difficult (as always) to pick our favorite Lozo post of the week, but Monday’s ruminations on ass-washing had us shitting in our pants. How handy this post was!

We are members of the Voodoo Sabermetrics High Council (see the link in our fancy text-box widget to the right). What is Voodoo Sabermetrics? We’ll defer to the Extrapolator for that one.

The Falcoholic makes some hilarious comments about Grady Jackson that just can not be taken back. Not that they should be.

A new level of douchebag zen.

Eric the Seal Clubber tears open an old wound, and pours a gallon of lemon juice in it.

Our favorite Cardinals blog has an interview with our favorite Baseball Prospectus writer, about the health issues confronting our favorite team.

Our Book of Scrap makes some salient points about the degeneration of Sports Illustrated into soft-core pornography. Not that we mind, we mean, who wants to see Peter King in a swimsuit. Hamburger, put your hand down.

When the World Stood Still: Najeh Davenport, a 5 Year Retrospecive

The world was changed in a fleeting moment on April 1, 2002.  Shockwaves were released from the Miami metropolitan area that those of us who are in perfect tune with the earth’s circadian rhythms – laymen call it the force – recognized immediately.

I was engaged in a younger man’s pursuit, but I felt it through the vomitous haze. I poked my head up and said, to no one in particular, “Something stupendous has happened.” As I looked around me, I noticed time had stopped. People halted mid-word, toilets frozen mid-flush, the air filled with deafening roar of silence.

You can call it the perfect storm of comedy; those of us in the know knew we had experienced something unique. The pretenders may call it unintentional; they would be mistaken. The universe has a distinct plan for its actions, like a precisely orchestrated sequence of dominoes that fall at pre-determined times. There was no randomness involved; it had been scripted for as long as the heavens had been oriented above.

In that ephemeral flash, as the dominoes fell, as the shockwaves pulsated, time ceased to exist, and those of us in the rhythm lived countless lifetimes. It was nirvana, and the prescience of the universe surged through our bodies, throwing us into infinite dimensions, drowning our conscious minds in pools of pure peace. For an instant, I could swear that we saw God.

And then it was gone. The normal harmony of the universe was restored, and we returned to planar existence.

It happened five years ago, yet not a second has passed. April 1, 2002, the day that Najeh Davenport used a walk-in closet as a water closet.